1 Message
0
2909
PowerEdge 2950 PERC 6/i - RAID 5 FOREIGN HDDs QUESTIONS
Hello all,
I have read through a number of these posts on the Dell Community regarding this kind of situation. I will describe mine concisely.
- We have 6 PDs and 2 VD's (that are both on PD 5).
- We encountered a power outage.
- Now PD 3 and PD 5 are coming up as Foreign. And both VDs are, as a result, coming up as Foreign
I'm aware that our options are to clear the foreign configuration (if there is only one foreign drive, barring a few exceptions) or import the foreign configuration (if there is more than one foreign drive). So, our direction would be Import the Foreign Configuration.
However, what is the risk associated with this? I'm aware that it is only supposed to manipulate RAID metadata, but this contains a very sizeable network FileShare, and we don't have the right equipment to do a non-write/read-only clone/backup.
Please see the attached images for more details.
DELL-Daniel My
Moderator
Moderator
•
6.2K Posts
0
July 9th, 2018 14:00
Hello
The drives are put into a foreign configuration when they fall out of sync with the rest of the virtual disk. The import operation will attempt to bring the drives online. It is not as risky as forcing a drive online, but the import operation is forcing the drives online. The controller will check data before importing to see if the drives are too far out of sync to import. It should not bring drives online that are too far out of sync, but there is still a risk that it will bring a drive online that is too far out of sync.
If the data is critical then you should perform some type of backup or drive clone. Even if the risk is minimal there is still risk. Also, it is best practice to make sure the controller is at the latest firmware revision before performing any import operations.
Thanks